Double shooting extends string of multi-victim gunfire in Baltimore

Justin George and Kevin Rector, The Baltimore Sun

Two men, both 19, walked into a Baltimore hospital Thursday night with gunshot wounds.

Police who responded to the hospital about 9:41 p.m. quickly determined both had been shot in the 5300 block of Lantern Court in the city's Westgate neighborhood, police said. Officers were actually on the scene, investigating reports of shots fired, when they were called to an area hospital. One victim was shot in the legs and the other sustained a graze wound to the arm. Baltimore police Det. Vernon Davis described the wounds as minor. Investigators said shots were fired from a passing vehicle and came from one suspect.

The double shooting extended a string of multiple-victim shootings in the city this week. There have been four since Monday.

Multiple single-victim shootings have also occurred, including two Wednesday, one fatal, that police released details on Thursday.

Just after 8 p.m. Wednesday, police were called to Maryland Shock Trauma Center after a 33-year-old man walked in with a gunshot wound to his leg. The man told investigators that, earlier in the day, three armed men in their 20s had attempted to rob him on the 700 block of Pennsylvania Ave., in the Seton Hill neighborhood, said police spokesman Sgt. Anthony Smith. The victim was wrestling on the ground when one of the suspects fired striking him in the leg.

The assailants fled after the gun went off and someone drove the victim to the hospital. Police do not have any suspects. Police describe the victim's condition as good. They are not identifying him.

At about 8:43 p.m. Wednesday, police responded to 28th Street and Fenwick Avenue in the Coldstream Homestead Montebello neighborhood and found a man shot in the head in the Fenwick alley. He was identified as Christopher Briggs, 18, of the 1600 block of Montpelier St., which is in the same neighborhood as where he was found.

He was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital and pronounced dead at 9:18 p.m. Police have no suspects or motives, Smith said.

In 2009, murder charges against Briggs, then 15, were dropped by prosecutors because of insufficient evidence after he turned himself in on a warrant in the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old. Police had said Briggs got into a fight with the victim and was overheard saying he would "take care" of him.

The following year, Briggs was charged with two counts of armed carjacking, assault, multiple gun charges and theft — all of which were disposed of in juvenile court. Juvenile court records are sealed, and it's unclear how the case was closed.

On Tuesday night, two men were killed and their mother injured in a triple-shooting home invasion in the Evergreen Lawn neighborhood of West Baltimore. Two men were also shot in a double shooting in Reservoir Hill.

On Monday night, two men were shot in a double shooting in the Mondawmin neighborhood.